Choices
by Cornuthaum
Summary: Faith made manifest can change even the most cynical souls as it drives off the cold dark horrors from beyond.


Disclaimer: I own nothing. If I did, I would have the money to buy all the bacon I wanted. But I don't. So, no bacon.

As the armored form of a well-built human male enters her quarters, the person sitting in the room's only bed smiles at him.

"Hail and well met, sir. Thank you for taking the time to... you know why."

She motions for him to sit on the broad, solid wooden furniture so common to the kingdom. He does.

"Please state your full name."

She sighs, nods, and continues.

"I am Knight-Lieutenant Caria Kendrick of Stormwind MI7, age twenty-seven, infiltration and pest removal division, in service of the defense of Azeroth."

He raises an eyebrow. An odd statement, more than he asked of her.

"We punched straight through their lines. They tried to stop us - ha, did they ever try - but there was no army on the face of Azeroth that could have stopped us."

Again, he raises an eyebrow. Jumping straight into what happened is unusual for an experienced operative like her.

"Their front line was disorganized - we had the advantage of surprise on our side. Clearly, they didn't think we'd breach the seals of Ahn'Qiraj before they were ready to do the same. I will admit that they fought admirably for such grossly unnatural creatures - all claws and chitin and clicking spidery limbs on the titanic stone blocks of their architecture - but at least in the outskirts, we had surprise on our side."

She takes a deep breath, lost in a particularly unpleasant memory.

"Marshal Souzern - you know, the night elf warrior with the hilarious purple beard and the eyebrows you could spit a small bird on? Yeah, that one - had my squad scout ahead once we got into their abominable city proper. That place was not meant for mortal eyes to see, sir, really."

She shudders, rubbing her shoulders with both arms.

"You can't imagine what it was like down there. Freezing cold tunnels alternating with baking hot rooms, chittering bugs **everywhere** that popped out of nowhere to spray you with acid... if it hadn't been for Chaplains Startree and Carlyle, all of us scouts would've died with molten faces and bugs eating our guts. Hell, Frazzlegear did. Really ugly way to die."

Pointing to her face, where an obviously lighter patch of skin goes from her collarbone up the entire left side of her face, she continues.

"And they nearly got me, too. Ol' Carlyle himself focused the Holy Light to cleanse and heal me, you know. Carlyle himself did..."

Her shoulders sag, and so does her gaze.

"We got through the first few major enemy combatants in good time too, though it involved some creative battlefield resurrections when we met that creepy trio of bugs in the first great hall we encountered. We penetrated deeper - lost a third of the ranged support when these whirlwind-bugs and their leader jumped us, poor buggers got totally diced, though they got magically reassembled when our two Silver Hands did... something..."

She leans back, folding her arms across her chest.

"It was magnificent, you know? There they were, seven of our best and brightest in helluva lot more than just seven pieces, arms, legs, fingers, whatnot, giblets everywhere from those whirling scythes, and then two men take their warhammers, hold them aloft and channel light into the darkness... _it was so beautiful..._..."

The man sits, continuing to write down ... something. She does not know what he is writing, and likely never will know.

"And then the dead just were alive and in on piece again. It was... awe-inspiring. They brought back the dead and dismembered with an act of faith and concentration... and that's when I started to wonder, you know. 'If faith can bring back the dead, what can't it do?'"

The man looks at her and nods.

"We kept on pushing and pushing and pushing, crushing those abominable worm-things. You've read the Marshal's report, I know you did 'cos everyone who has the clearance read it. The giant wasp-thing was terrifying. We were barely able to hold her off long enough for paladin lieutenants Slatefist and Karsteen to resurrect the dead before we had to retreat through the arcane gates our arcanists had opened... bless their hearts."

Again, she looks down at her hands, flexing and unflexing them.

"We returned a scant ten hours later - we missed the ship to Theramore - to see the remnants of a horde strike force retreating in much the same way from the beast as we had done, though, I must say, now we were prepared. Chaplain Carlyle raised everyone's spirits with the field sermon - hell, even the treehugging hardcore Elune-worshippers were moved by his words."

She smiles.

"'The Light does not tell us what to do. The Light does not expect us to fail, does not expect us to excel. The Light simply is, and it is up to each and every one of us whether or not we are going to **try**. But today, right here and now, it doesn't matter whether you are human, elf, gnome or dwarf. We are all the same in the eyes of the Light and I tell you, we will stand together where others would have fallen as they are seperated. You who stand with me come from all walks of life on Azeroth, from all the races of the Alliance, and each and every one of you is as much a friend to me as you are my brothers and sisters in this our righteous battle against the forces of a mad god. Do not merely place your faith in the Light, no, place your faith in yourselves and your fellow soldiers and together, WE WILL BE INVINCIBLE! FOR HONOR, ALLIANCE AND AZEROTH!'"

Silence reigns for several minutes in the room as she catches her breath, exhausted from re-enacting the rightfully famous speech.

"We won. We won and we annihilated every last insectoid and obsidian bastard in that wretched city and we **slew** their mad god, sir. We **killed** a god, we **destroyed** it and we succeeded where the great dragons themselves had failed. And y'know, sir, I can tell you why we won, why we managed to ignore the pain of the meteor-fire, the soul-rending gaze of an Old God and the crushing grasp of its tentacles."

He patiently waits for her to speak again.

"Because we believed that we could do it. Because we knew we had to do it."

A single tear rolls down her cheeks, past a mouth bent in a happy smile.

"Because we had faith in ourselves. Such is the Holy Light..."

The man stops writing, stands and makes to leave the room. As he does so, he says one last thing to her.

"You shall start your training as an Initiate of the Silver Hand tomorrow."

-

_Setting_: Ahn'Qiraj, the cthulhuoid desert bug fortress-city, pre-Burning Crusade.  
><em>Dramatis Personae:<em>  
>Miss Kendrick, human rogue.<br>Sir, unnamed paladin of the Silver Hand.

Moral of the story: Sometimes a profound act of faith can change a person, and even more so when you can see the holy light burn in someone like a beacon in the darkest caves of the world.


End file.
